


Black Magic

by QuietThing



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 21:06:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9257267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuietThing/pseuds/QuietThing
Summary: Laura, Perry and Lafontaine, operating a struggling Divintation and Magicks business, are offered a strange commission from Karnstein Industries - one that will prove both dangerous and irresistible for the trio. But with her mother out of town seeing to other matters, Carmilla's left in charge of the new business venture, and finds something irresistible herself ...





	

If Laura had been checking, she would have noticed that the mechanised Lull engine Lafontaine had built began the first of its alarming behaviours at the exact same time as a conspicuously large sum of money was deposited into the business account. She would later learn that the source of the money was Karnstein Industries – a multinational conglomerate corporation specialising, amongst other things, in nuclear weaponry, and with whom she was soon to become inextricably linked – but for now, Laura merely stared dumbfounded at the bizarre oscillations of the instrument, before leaning back in her chair and surveying the hallway from her office to see if there was anyone she could immediately alert from where she was sat.

Anomalies in their divination instruments were rare, although not unheard of, so Laura was sceptical that this particular behaviour necessarily signalled something apocalyptic in nature. After all, business had been slow of late – there were apparently few machinations or interferences occurring in the various realms, any activity too menial to be picked up by any of the scrying methods they had to hand. Or there was the possibility of course, Laura reminded herself so as not to become complacent, that the activities occurring were so diabolical in their nature as to be immediately covered up by the superior forces that were setting them in motion. 

Perry, one of her longest-standing college friends and now also employer, didn’t seem disheartened at the rapidly diminishing revenue the business was accruing. She didn’t seem disheartened by anything at all in fact, even when a local infamous alcoholic known only as ‘Pantless Pete’ started using their fire escape as his platform to spread the word of an impending apocalypse, or when, once his proclamations had been made, her started using it for something worse than that. 

Lafontaine, another hardened survivor of the rigours of Silas University, took a more realistic view, claiming that the business would turn a profit ‘the day all the demons were let out of hell and started a community outreach program about the dangers of organised religion.’ 

The machine, whirring more violently by the second, suddenly spun loose from its trestle and clattered loudly onto the desk, making Laura scoot her chair away reflexively. The inscribed metal discs spun and settled like runaway coins, and Laura moved closer again to examine the damage. 

‘Hey, what did you do to my Lull machine?’ asked a voice, and Laura spun round to see Lafontaine hanging onto the doorframe, leaning half into the room.

‘I didn’t do anything!’ Laura insisted, ‘it just started to go all Phantom Zone and then it collapsed.’

‘Weird,’ Lafontaine acknowledged, stepping fully into the room and peering suspiciously at the dislocated instrument of divination. ‘Erratic behaviour like that is pretty uncommon with these sorts of instruments. Unless ...’

‘Unless what?’ Laura asked and Lafontaine stared into the middle distance the way they sometimes did when the English language failed to articulate the science inside. ‘I don’t like your unlesses Lafontaine. They usually mean extra work. Or explosions.’

‘Well, it could mean that there’s an unnatural development within the natural realm, right?’ They posited. ‘A big one,’ they clarified. ‘One with an immeasurable outcome, causing the discs to oscillate through all the possible outcomes without settling on one, sustained kind of like Newton’s Cradle.’

‘Right,’ Laura acknowledged the theory, biting her lip and looking down at the shining metal discs. ‘So … the fact that it literally just burst apart probably isn’t good news.’

‘Good news everyone!’ a voice exclaimed, and the pair turned to see Perry fast-approaching down the hallway to join them. They scrambled to obscure the ruined instrument from Perry’s view. Laura’s office was small. Tiny in fact, as she sometimes pointed out during meetings concerning the redistribution of the budget, and three people made the space feel incredibly cramped. ‘I’ve just got us a new commission!’ Perry beamed, looking at each of them in turn, blue eyes shining. 

Laura and Lafontaine exchanged wary looks

‘A commission from who exactly?’ asked Lafontaine.

‘None other than the CEO of Karnstein Industries,’ Perry said.

‘Who now?’ asked Lafontaine, looking to Laura for a prompt and receiving nothing more than a vacant expression.

Perry raised her eyebrows, seemingly surprised at the subdued response. ‘Come on, you know Karnstein Industries, they have an entire building in town. They’re the sixth largest corporation in the developed world. They were in the news recently for polluting that town’s water supply with chemical waste?’ she prompted. 

Lafontaine regarded her blankly.

‘They did that advertisement you like? You know, for switching your electricity provider? With the dog in the bath and the little toy boat?’

‘Oh yeah!’ Lafonatine’s clouded expression cleared and they giggled fondly at the memory. 

‘So what is the ‘CEO of Karnstein Industries’ like then?’ asked Laura, preoccupied with the troubling coinciding of this new commission and the sorry fate of the conjuring wheels. 

‘Oh you know … very business chic: shoulder pads, high-heels, hair in an up-do, quick black eyes of a crow, talked finance immediately, ’ Perry listed, ‘… kind of terrifying.’ she admitted. ‘But we won’t be dealing with her after today anyway. She said she’ll be out of town for the next few weeks and we’re to conduct any further business matters with her daughter Carmilla.’

‘I can’t believe we’re actually going to get paid,’ Lafontaine said, unable to contain their grin. ‘Though I will miss the increasingly inventive threats my landlady tapes to my door when I’m late with the rent ...’ then their eyes widened as if some great epiphany had befallen them. ‘I’m taking us all out for tacos to celebrate!’

Perry clapped her hands together silently and swept out of the room again to gather her things. 

Laura frowned. ‘But what about the -’

‘Oh who cares,’ Lafontaine stopped her. ‘I’ll make a new one. Hell, I’ll buy a new one. One that won’t gyrate itself out of the possibility of usefulness. Now c’mon, get your coat.’ 

Laura still felt a lingering hesitancy that stilted her own enthusiasm, watching as Lafontaine retreated from her office. She sighed, reaching out for the nearest disc, tracing her finger gently along one of the Latin inscriptions. 

Patientia, she wrote. 

*

‘No I do not have to come out there right now and see to it,’ Carmilla assured the spectacularly angry site manager of her mother’s latest luxury hotel building in Dubai. ‘No if you’ve struck the water mains with your little diggers then it’s up to you to deal with it.’ She drummed the fingers of her right hand irritably on the desk, her left hand squeezing increasingly tightly around the phone she was holding. ‘A bucket?’ she suggested. The ill-tempered voice on the other end both amplified and accelerated, and Carmilla held the phone away from her ear, her expression the embodiment of disinterest. After a couple of minutes she brought it back close enough to listen, and noting that the noise seemed to have stopped, she nodded to herself gratefully and placed the phone back on the receiver. 

She had, however, only a few seconds of silence to enjoy before it was shattered by the phone’s shrill ring again. ‘Ugh,’ she exclaimed, pushing the contraption away from her in disgust before dropping her head forcefully into her cupped palms. 

A knock on her door announced the presence of her mother’s secretary, a frail, wispy thing of a girl with dark circles under her eyes and a pasty complexion. ‘What the hell is it Jane?’ Carmilla asked without lifting her head, not bothering to mask the exasperation in her tone. ‘And if it’s not the tasty delivery of tepid Type O that I ordered fifteen minutes ago I may have to kill you.’ She looked up. ‘Or fire you,’ she added. ‘Whichever mother would do.’

Jane’s mouth flickered momentarily upwards then back to a straight line like she didn’t know if Carmilla was joking or not, before informing her: ‘There’s some people here to see you. From … um … Sperrytual Encounters’?’ Jane read hesitantly from the post-it note in her hand.

Carmilla let out a long, loud groan by way of acknowledgement.

‘I’ll show them in then,’ said Jane. 

Carmilla rubbed tiredly at her eyes, listening to the shuffling of what she calculated was three sets of legs invading the room. She sighed heavily and reopened her eyes, sliding her fingertips slowly down her face, dragging the skin of her cheeks down slightly with them. Three figures loitered uncertainly at the door. She narrowed her eyes at them. ‘Well come in then if you must, I have exactly zero interest in shouting at you across the room.’

The party, startled at the address, scrambled into action, rushing forwards to Carmilla’s desk then stopping abruptly, unsure of what to do next.

‘Sit down,’ Carmilla told them. They all did so in perfect unison, which pleased Carmilla. She surveyed the trio slowly, all of whom fidgeted uncomfortably at the obvious scrutiny, her gaze lingering the longest on the girl sat on the right – a bright-faced young woman with long, honey-coloured hair and shining eyes.

‘So,’ Carmilla said eventually, leaning back in her chair, ‘What possible reason could bring you here at 8.30 on a Tuesday morning when I’m sure we all have far better things to be doing?’

The woman in the centre spoke up first, dressed as smartly as possible in worn out clothes, with an intensely focussed expression and fiery hair of the untameable variety. ‘Sorry Miss Karnstein, I spoke to your mother at the end of last week. She has a commission for us. We were told you would be aware of it.’

Carmilla sighed. ‘Were you now,’ she wondered out loud, opening a drawer in the desk and retrieving her mother’s leather bound book of appointments. She heaved the tome up onto the desk and wrenched it open. She sheathed through it, pages turning with creaks of parchment until she got to last week’s page. She ran her finger down the scrawled list of her mother’s spidery handwriting. 

The third member of the group sat up so sharply that their suit squeaked against the leather of their chair. ‘Hey,’ they said by way of address, ‘sorry, but is that … Sumerian?’

Carmilla looked up. She hadn’t even noticed. Of course mother would write down her appointments in Ancient Sumerian. Because it wasn’t enough to have a five foot high portrait of herself wielding a ceremonial bone-carved sceptre towering over the room, or to have her the interior design of her office styled as a sepulchre … these days it didn’t seem to Carmilla that her mother bothered to keep up the slightest modicum of disguise as to her true nature. ‘Um … yes, I guess it is,’ Carmilla admitted, wondering if it was worth expending the energy it would take to concoct a feasible explanation, ‘Company policy,’ she said, deciding against it. ‘Ah yes. Sperrytual Encounters,’ Carmilla said after a few moments, tapping her finger against the appropriate note. Her mother had told her about this group, she recalled now. ‘Is that some sort of wordplay?’ she asked, ‘Or are you just a dreadful speller?’

‘Ha! Dreadful speller!’ exclaimed the Sumerian enthusiast, before regarding their colleague’s horrified expressions quizzically. ‘Because … we do, you know ... spells?’ they clarified. They sank back into their chair.

‘No no,’ assured the woman in the middle, ‘I’m Perry. The name is, well, it’s … just a bit of fun really.’

‘No prizes for guessing who came up with it,’ Carmilla noted drily before returning to the appointments book. She read slowly; her Sumerian was getting rusty, understandably, as she had spent the last century trying to keep up with the steady butchery of the English language.

‘Ritual … white, um … magicians …’ she translated out-loud, ‘leave … your … cockerel style?’ she paused, ‘that doesn’t sound right,’ she muttered. 

The girl on the right cleared her throat and leant forward slightly, a move that Carmilla couldn’t help but notice revealed slightly more skin at the top of her shirt than perhaps she would’ve hoped. ‘Sorry, I think that symbol is for opening? Something opening. It’s like a key or something.’

Lifting her gaze from the girl’s chest to her face, Carmilla frowned sceptically before returning her attention to the book. She narrowed her eyes at the symbol for a moment before acquiescing, impressed. She sat back and regarded the girl again. ‘Well well. A room full of Sumerian scholars.’ She felt herself smiling, but seeing how the girl’s face seemed to redden slightly Carmilla chose to conceal her approval and said instead, ‘No wonder you had nothing better to do on a Tuesday morning.’ 

But the girl’s translation had the desired effect, and the memory of her mother’s debriefing on this particular appointment came sharply into focus in Carmilla’s mind. 

‘Well, now that small detail’s cleared up,’ she said, closing the book and resting her elbows upon it. She looked at each group member one by one, slowly drawing her lips into a smile. ‘I understand you people can open the gates of hell.’

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know a whole lot about magic, but what I've picked up from various sources (mostly the internet) I've tried to include to some degree of accuracy, because authenticity is cool. That said, I've also made up a bunch of stuff, because it's a story :)


End file.
